Larry Sultan’s Pictures From Home

Larry Sultan’s art project titled ‘Pictures From Home’ was created between 1982 and 1992, featuring part family album, part visual novella, that comprises family snapshots, old home videos, as well as memento mori.

The result is a narrative collage in which the boundary between the documentary and the staged becomes increasingly ambiguous. Larry Sultan used his own contemporary photographs as pendants to his parents’ old movies and snapshots, exploring a complete, more complex sense of family. The chronological distance separating these two components raises questions of history, memory, and time. By photographing his parents, the artist reverses the social norm, discussing themes like the sense of power, identity, and self-creation experienced on either side of the camera. This portrait of the home evokes the critical issues of aging, disparity, wealth, relationships and ubiquitous family values.